The car is a 1996 Nissan Maxima GXE 4spd Automatic

the transmission has ~65k miles on it and was from a relatively babied car without boost or nitrous, upon install into the current car at 60k miles the tranny was upgraded with a valve body upgrade and a tranny cooler

The problem- on returning from a trip the tranny started to slip in 1st gear occasionally
The car will be stopped in drive and will come out of gear and when gassing it the car will rev freely. Sometimes the tranny will catch and lurch forward, otherwimes I had to put it in park and put it back in drive where the tranny will work again. Once moving the tranny seems to work fin (even though I was a little bit nervous to push it to see if it slipped in all gears but during gentle acceleration there was no slippage in any other gears.

There is a transmission fluid leak that just started recently from back around the pan and it is quite a decent sized leak leaving a 16" diameter oil spot on the pavement in one day.
However at the time the car was being driven, the tranny fluid level when checked in park was sufficient

The transmission fluid is in perfect condition but with a slight slight smell of burnt metal

can anyone give me some pointers? The OD light does not blink or anything

I'm wondering could it be the solenoids, lack of fluid pressure (??) or something else!

thanks in advance!

 

Clutches burnt up, solenoid intermittent failure, a failing seal...a number of things.

 

Usually a tranny having problems will trip a code. not sure if it will show up w/o a scan tool because I always use a scan tool in that situation. Try pulling some codes, if no codes it is probably internal.